Ethics and Anarchy -- How We Play, Enjoy and See Games

Maybe life is best with a little imbalance?

Consider this an incredibly delayed reaction to J.P. Grant’s article on fair play, which was an incredible response to Jenn Frank’s article.

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Art You Might Hate: Pinkroad by Limee Young + U Joo

Many thanks to Colossal for pointing me in the direction of this power couple. Husband and wife duo, Limee Young and U Joo are a pretty cool team. I've been studying a lot on kinetic art, and sculpture specifically, Limee Young's name kept popping up.

Imagine my surprise when I ventured to their site and noticed some pretty amazing paintings, illustrations and video of their meticulous works.

I've always been interested in the construction of kinetic sculpture. I use to build robots for crying out loud! But this? This is a little over my head. The whole idea of kinetic sculpture is reliant on either wind energy, a standalone electricity source, or an artist having an active hand in how the kinetic energy is stored. Like being on a seesaw, but an amazingly beautiful and complex machine is on the other end of the plank.

So in these videos, you are seeing machines function because of liquid, weight and equal amounts of pushing and pulling on joints. Depending on how far a joint moves a microprocessor on a circuit board uses the energy generated to tell another joint to move. Or in the above video's case, a processor is telling a joint to move back, while the kinetic energy stored in the joints are telling it to move forward. This is as best as I can describe the very little I understand.

I thought I was getting closer to understanding kinetic art, but this work is proof I'm no where near comprehension. It's truly amazing work. After the jump is more stills, illustrations and videos. Thanks for the inspiration U_Joo and Lim!

 

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Art You May Hate: Cosplay From A Sci-Fi Convention In 1980

Kathy Sanders @ Westercon

In my ongoing research of all-things-niche I've come to several conclusions. One undeniable truth is that the geeks, nerds and misfits of today are products of something and/or someone.

We grew up in the time of Lord Of The Rings, Transformers [unfortunately], Scott Pilgrim and if you're an old fogey like me ... Willow. But this all came from something. This all came from someone. Several someones.

As a new year starts, I thought it'd be most pertinant to look back to a group of people who grew up in the age of a Day Of The Triffids, The Outer Limits and the good Star Wars movies. More importantly, when our elders say "they don't get kids nowadays" (a phrase I'm finding creeping into my vernacular), we can dig into their shadowy past and say, "maybe you just didn't hang out with the right people?"

This post also functions as monument to me kinda-sorta coming around to cosplay as a culture. There are still aspects that I don't get, but I think me not getting something makes it all the more worth knowing about. You know, as opposed to giggling and pointing, whispering, "look at those weirdos." 

After the break are more amazing photos. They come courtesy of The Los Angeles Science Fiction Society [yes, that's a thing that exists]. More importantly, there was a photographer around this time that said, "you know what? This is worth documenting." His name is Dik Daniels. 

Enjoy!

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Commercial Break: Sometimes It's Hard Defending Gamers

A couple days ago I had a conversation with one of my [non-video game] lady pals about a current-slash-ex-dude she was seeing. She said she see couldn't see herself with someone who played games as much as she 'thought' he did. I'm using games broadly, but she meant video games. 

As a clarifier, the young man apparently audio recorded his progress. This seemed to be enough for said young lady to come to a conclusion that, "uh uh!" This ain't what she wanted from a romantic interest.

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Season's Beatings: Velocity -- Oct. 14th - Oct. 16th

Just thought I'd make my obligatory, annual post about the best damn fighting game tournament on Earth. Well, at least in my eyes, and I wear glasses, so that's like four! This weekend in Columbus, Ohio the sixth installment of the Season's Beatings fighting game tournament will be held at MoMo's. I will be holding a MadCatz stick in one hand and a DSLR in the other. If you can weed through the 700 hundred-plus, attendees, say "Hi!" I promise I'll greet in return.

*Disclaimer: I owe a great deal of credit to Godlike Entertainment and the Season's Beatings events, because it made me realize where I wanted to go with my writing. It made me value the fighting game community. So that's why this is especially important to me.

[After the break: Weekend Schedule, Live Stream link, and Photos]

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Commercial Break: Women's Clothing Through Time

I talked to my mom really early this morning. I told her about the changes to facebook, and why everybody hates it, but, you know -- still uses it. I told her about my flat tire and how I'll have no time to repair it until my one day off.

She yawned. She said, "you'll be alright, take it one day at a time." Then she did her hair. My mom's always done her own hair. Funny how things never change. 

IBE 2011 Thoughts...

Friends on my facebook page are probably annoyed of my constant postings of this past weekend's IBE festivities. Full disclosure: All video you see here in this post is property of The Notorious IBE and they deserve full credit for their production value.

With that out of the way, time to share. I've recently gotten the dancing itch again. I've been dancing for a little over 10 years [which is peanuts compared to most established bboys and other dancers]. Everyday, after work, I go to practice. For the past year, or so, I've been trying to practice more. It initially was to maintain my girlish figure and to keep some sort of playful balance in my life. It also didn't help that I took a three year sabbatical and my form was a bit, well, crap.

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Things I Did While In San Diego...

Visit La Holla beach, but remember to mispronounce "La Hoya" to "La Holla."Before we get into the details of one of the greatest trips of my life, I think I should send a tremendous thank you and shout out to Jesse Cunningham and Lea Stretch. Without them this trip wouldn't have been as great as it turned out. There are a lot of things that happened on the trip that clearly won't fit in any blog post, but hopefully I can get some of the finer points right.

Below are some photos and bulletpoints of the wild ride that was San Diego...

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EVO 2011 -- What Does It Feels Like To Throw A Fireball For $10,000

As of me typing this little entry, we are about a week out from the events that transpired at this year's EVO. A great deal of joy and surprise was had by all that were interested. For those who filled up my Twitter feed with, "What's an EVO?" Go here for the full history.

There seems to be something strange happening in the fighting game community. The level of recognition and genuine interest has been hard-fought over the past decade. Within that time, fighting game makers: Namco, Capcom, Aksys, have helped and hurt the culture. There was an obvious feeling of rushed games or just too many to play at one time. Games around the turn of the millennium were having a renaissance genre-wide. During the era of Third Strike, Marvel vs. Capcom 2 and Guilty Gear, there were so many iterations of fighting games, it was almost like, Guitar Hero.

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What The Wire Has Taught Me...

[Part 2] 

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